Marine Le Pen’s far right National Front scored a stunning first victory in European Parliament elections in France on Sunday as critics of the European Union registered a continent-wide protest vote against austerity and mass unemployment. Without waiting for the final result, a somber French Prime Minister Manuel Valls went on television to call the…
Pope Francis has landed in Israel for a two-day visit. The pope arrived Sunday afternoon at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport via a helicopter ride from Bethlehem, where he spent the morning. Francis will depart Israel on Monday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres greeted the pope upon arrival, accompanied by a band…
National Front leader Marine Le Pen called for the dissolution of the French national assembly on Sunday after exit polls showed her anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic party winning European Parliament elections in France. “What else can the president do after such a rejection?” Le Pen told reporters at National Front headquarters when asked if President Francois Hollande…
Billionaire Petro Poroshenko claimed Ukraine’s presidency on Sunday after exit polls gave him an absolute majority in a first round of voting and, vowing to end a conflict with pro-Russian rebels, he pledged to align his country with Europe. Exit polls gave Poroshenko, a confectionery magnate with long experience in government, more than 55 percent…
Belgian police were hunting a gunman on Sunday who shot dead two Israelis and a French woman at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, in an attack French President Francois Hollande said was without doubt motivated by anti-Semitism. Security around all Jewish institutions in Belgium was raised to the highest level following Saturday’s shooting, while French…
Police said they arrested 26 people at a protest by Jewish nationalists on Sunday at the Cenacle in Jerusalem, the traditional site of Jesus’s Last Supper, where Pope Francis is due to hold a Mass on Monday. Some Jews believe the Tomb of King David is in a lower room in the same building. Jewish…
(Reuters) — Pope Francis made a surprise stop on Sunday at the wall Palestinians abhor as a symbol of Israeli oppression, and later invited presidents from both sides of the divide to the Vatican to pray for peace. In an image likely to become the most emblematic of his trip to the holy land, Francis…
An employee of the Jewish museum of Brussels died of injuries he sustained in the shooting there, bringing the death toll to four people. The fourth fatality from Saturday afternoon’s shooting passed away later Saturday night, the Benelux broadcaster RTL reported on its website. The other victims were an Israeli couple, the Israeli foreign minister…
The grandfather of the man suspected in the mass killing in Santa Barbara, California, was a famed British photojournalist who took iconic photos of Jewish survivors and mass graves at liberated concentration camps in the final weeks of World War II. Police identified Elliot Rodger, 22, a college student as the gunman who drove through…
Pope Francis flies to the West Bank on Sunday to start the most delicate part of his stay in the Middle East, with visits to the Palestinian Territories and Israel, where his every word will be scrutinized. Church officials say his three-day tour of the region, which started on Saturday in Jordan, is purely focused…
(Reuters) — Pope Francis called for urgent steps to end Syria’s three-year-old civil war as he arrived in neighboring Jordan on Saturday, starting a Middle East trip aimed at bringing hope to the region’s dwindling Christian population. Addressing Jordan’s King Abdullah on his first visit as pope to the Holy Land, Francis praised the Western-backed…
